


day one. half past four in the morning.

by 2ndtolastrow



Series: Congratulations, it’s an old man! [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, also the batman continuity isnt canon compliant because i wanted duke to exist, it’s the flashpoint au you’ve been looking for, that is if youre me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 04:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20167795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndtolastrow/pseuds/2ndtolastrow
Summary: Barry Allen tells Thomas Wayne about a world where his son Bruce is not only alive, but has kids of his own. (“Five sons and a daughter, legally. Emotionally I’d add some more.”) Thomas did not expect to live to see it.





	day one. half past four in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: lots of mentions of flashpoint!bruce’s death  
-a mention of Thomas hallucinating in the past  
-one mention of “what happened to Martha” (though it’s probably not becoming the joker in this universe)  
-implications of Damian’s upbringing, though nothing even approaching explicit

The first thing Thomas does after getting dressed is shred the letter he’d written for Bruce. Then, he empties the shredder’s contents into a lit fireplace.

(The clothes are Bruce’s, a full grown man and the biggest in the manor, but they’re still too small for Thomas. He’d left the buttons half-done and hadn’t bothered with the belt left for him.

Alfred promised to have some of his clothes down by tomorrow, and those will be out of fashion and creased permanently, but they’ll fit. He’d said there would be something proper soon, and Thomas believes him. 

It’s good to see Alfred again.)

He is sent to sleep in a guest room, discomfited by the darkness and unfamiliarity. He hasn't slept at night in years. The molding is the same as it has always been, but the walls are a soft blue. 

He slips out of the bedroom around the fifteen minute mark, and goes to investigate.

The layout is the same, if not the decor. (He can see where certain items have been moved or replaced. Some that he’d hated, too, and some that confuse him until he goes over the list and realizes that they’re all fairly fragile. His son has _children._) He makes his way to the kitchen, and freezes.

There’s a boy eating at the kitchen counter. Said boy, in all honesty, brings Thomas straight back to the days directly after Bruce’s death. He used to hallucinate, for the first bit. His mind would pretend that Bruce had just come home and then everything could be okay.

Then the boy looks up, and the resemblance becomes clearly a _resemblance,_ and not a doppelgänger-ship. His skin is darker by far, his eyes a piercing green, his nose a slightly different shape. There’s a scar near his left ear. He’s older than Bruce ever was.

“You must be Grandfather.” His speech is sharply enunciated, and slightly accented. “I’m Damian.”

Thomas realizes, suddenly, that he’s still staring. That he’s frozen in the doorway. His face goes through the motions of a smile on autopilot. “Nice to meet you, kiddo. I take it you’re grandchild number one?”

“Tt.” That noise takes him back. It had taken Martha ages to break Bruce of the habit. “Yes, I suppose. Only Thomas is in town, and he’s asleep currently.”

Though Thomas had expected it, he still stops in the motion of pulling out the chair next to him to say, “He named a kid after me?”

Damian has apparently decided his oatmeal holds more interesting depths. “Hm. No, he’s adoptive, as are all my ‘siblings.’”

Thomas sits down. The chair is higher, more like that of a barstool than what he’d think of as appropriate for eating at. He’d never put this in. “And you don’t go by your middle name?”

“Legally, I do not _have_ a middle name.”

“I’ll have to get on him about the next one.”

Damian laughs. It isn’t a child’s laugh, but a short, controlled burst. Thomas notes that. “Do you know any of our names?”

“I know yours.”

Another child might have snickered or rolled their eyes. Damian makes his “Tt,” again, and pulls a phone from his pocket. After a moment, he sets it down flat on the table and slides it over. There’s a selfie taken by a smiling man, pinning Damian against him. “That is Grayson. _Richard._ He is the eldest.”

Thomas looks at him, at the way his hair curls, his blue eyes, his jawline, and his wide smile. He squints at the gap between him a Damian’s heights, guesses a bit at it. He could probably pick Richard out of a lineup now, and he’s planning on doing the same for the rest.

Damian repeats this with a broadly built man with a white streak in his hair hanging out of a tree (Jason), a video of a heavily scarred woman dancing to something with a whole lot of drums (Cassandra), a younger guy passed out in an awkward position (Timothy), and a teenager with three spoons balanced on his face (Duke. Thomas.). 

“You call your siblings by their last names?”

His grandson(!) shrugs. 

Which is when Alfred walks in, and his face goes through a series of expressions Thomas isn’t exactly certain of how to read. (It’s been a few years, after all.) He’s pretty sure, though, that Alfred had found the guest bed and the bathroom empty, panicked, been about to ask if Damian had seen Thomas, and then gone through all of his emotional cycle to settle on relief.

“Master Damian, Mister Wayne.”

“Oh, come on. It hasn’t been Mister Wayne since the first time Martha called me a manchild and you took her side.”

Alfred smiles, slowly. “I suppose not, Master Thomas.”

Thomas smiles back, slowly. This one feels more natural, but also more unfamiliar. He had never had any other friends quite like Alfred, before or since meeting him. The smile feels like he knows Alfred’s must, like he’s finally figured out that if he were to say something like “hello, old friend,” he’d be allowed to mean it.

Damian looks between the two of them, and apparently decides the dark horse contender for interest (his oatmeal) is the sure winner. 

Thomas gets up from the table, cursing his bad knees (and back and arms and ribs and bad everything, honestly). They meet in the middle of the kitchen, Thomas’s longer strides balancing Alfred’s quicker gait.

Thomas crushes him close, uncaring of whatever boundaries there might’ve been. Alfred’s arm snake around to hold him back. It is the first hug Thomas has had in years. 

Little Kate used to hug him, even though Jake had blamed him about Martha. He takes a deep breath, lets go. 

Thomas steps back and puts his hands on Alfred’s shoulders. They hadn’t really had a chance to—there’d been Bruce and—he looks happier than Thomas’s Alfred. Not quite as skinny, but a good amount older. “You look good, old chum.”

Alfred grins. (Not many people realized he could do that, but it’s a sharp, laughing thing.) He puts on an accent to reply. “You don’t, old sport. C’mon, let’s get you fed.”

Damian chokes on his oatmeal, and Thomas decides he could get used to this.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Comments, kudos, and feedback are all very welcome


End file.
